What is The REAL Value of a Link?
Written by Casie Gillette on November 29th, 2007With all of the talk lately about paid-links, PageRank reductions and nofollows I have started to wonder “what is the REAL value of a link?”. I spend countless hours finding linking opportunities for clients, instilling in them the importance of backlinks and when it comes right down to it, I honestly don’t know the definitive answer to that question.
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- Is a nofollowed link that drives traffic more or less valuable than a search friendly link that doesn’t?
- Is a link from a large trusted website better than a link from a smaller more relevant one?
- How do we qualify/quantify which links are valuable? Or is it simply that all links are valuable?
I recently completed a link building campaign for a client that involved contacting bloggers and sending them products for review. The campaign went quite well and each review included two or three links back to the client’s site. However, not all of the links were search engine friendly. Some used nofollows and JavaScript while a couple used affiliate IDs and redirects.
All my hard work for nothing (insert pouty face)!
Ok that is not true by a long shot. When it came down to it, I will admit I had an initial tinge of disappointment. I mean these were great places to receive backlinks from when it came to SEO. But in the end each link was certainly valuable in its own way. The reviews were all positive, we had relevant traffic, a number of sales, new affiliates sign on and we reached an audience we hadn’t previously.
So what is the REAL value of these links?
I think that each link’s “value” has to be determined by it’s purpose. If you set out to find links solely to improve your rankings without regard to traffic, branding, etc, then that link should be valued differently than one with the purpose of attracting visitors.
A redirected or nofollowed link that doesn’t bring traffic has little value in my eyes while at the same time, a link that isn’t nofollowed from a trusted site can be extremely valuable even though it doesn’t drive traffic. And then there’s links from…Anyway, I could go on and on but the point is, the value of a link is subjective to the site and the purpose.
Now if I could just explain this to clients…
I am not an SEO person, just a small businessman who buys links and SEO services. So far I have never ever bought a link for their pagerank. I only buy for traffic and if the site is a PR0 which still does well for me, I would pay more for the link than a PR7 that gets me far less visitors.
November 30th, 2007 at 8:04 pmI don’t believe in playing the pagerank game since Google has proven they can pull the rug out of any site anytime they please. Usually just for selling links as they do.
When Google acts it is like an elephant moving and innocent people get hurt. As an example there are people around the world that rely on their incomes from PayPerPost and Smorty. They do it to support their families but just because of the pagerank devaluation, they are hurting and PPP and others don’t give them the work that they did. There is one who posted on my earthfrisk site that looks to be near suicide and lives in Malaysia I think. Here is her post - ( Take out the link if you want, I just wanted to show it as an example of relying on Google or any one company for ratings or links. http://www.peacebella.com/2007/11/29/final-destiny/
I think this is sad and like I said I value links only for traffic.
As you say you value a link more from a site with PR that isn’t no-followed, but the big G is clamping down on these more and more. Maybe for search engine results yo uare correct, but if anyone honestly looks at things and compares search engine results with social media as an example. to hell with search engine results. The hits from social media sites like Stumbleupon and Digg and others kills Google and Yahoo clicks by many hundreds and hundreds and sometimes thousands of visitors a day. This is for varied businesses too from real estate, virtual offices and investment companies that I own.
Do you think that with the rise of social media, search engine results and links that pass juice as they say are becoming less and less relevant? I can only speak from my own experience and for my sites in various fields Google and other SE clicks are now decreasing every month and social media is rising fast. I don’t know what this will mean for your industry but I and the webmasters I employ as well as the SEO people are slowly moving more towards social media, as we don’t like kowtowing to pagerank or Google games.